Questions[]
(...) or ignore the opponent's minions without the opponent being able to completely clear their own. Their own what? I don't understand that part.
Should we mention cards summoning multiple minions, the use of stat buffs, healing and effects like windfury? Charge is very important in maintaining or regaining board control. Cards that grant charge to other cards, like Warsong commander or Tundra rhino are great for this. Should we have a paragraph about card synergy here? You first play a few low-cost minions, later you add more powerful ones that works well with the ones (still) present, like beasts, murlocks, mechs etc., add a Raid leader ...
Do we need Board control page and where should it redirect: here, to Aggro deck or be a separate article?
Is tempo the same as initiative in chess? -- Karol007 (talk) 14:25, 9 June 2015 (UTC)
- I've significantly reworked the page. Hopefully the part that was confusing is clearer now. As with all my recent strategy additions, I'm just one person, so if you or the community has a different understanding of terms and concepts than me, feel free to make changes or ask me about it!
- I added a number of examples of valuable mechanics, including Charge. I think some of the other things you mentioned, like stat buffs and synergy, are already covered by the idea of making favorable trades - but, perhaps we should add that discussion to the Trade page! For example,
Shattered Sun Cleric provides 4/3 worth of stats, which is not inherently a huge tempo swing for 3 mana; its value comes from it enabling the minion it buffs to trade favorably. Similar thing for Raid Leader. However, I'm not sure Charge is necessarily as important to tempo as it is for burst damage. A Tundra Rhino is not adding a lot of power to the board for 5 mana, so it's not especially good for tempo, although it can enable some burst damage or favorable trades.
- I also created a short Board control page which gives a quick description and then links to a couple others. My attitude is, if the term is not a clear synonym of any other, it deserves at least a short page. Obviously we can't do a long strategy section for every single one, but we can at least explain how a term relates to others, then link to those pages for more detail. Anyway, you should add anything to Board control that I missed!
- I'm not that familiar with chess strategy so I can't really speak to that! But it at least sounds similar. - jerodast (talk) 20:15, 9 June 2015 (UTC)
- However, it is also possible to control the board in a reactive, defensive manner, which often means that goal is simply to ensure the opponent does not build up significant tempo, rather than actually gaining it oneself. from Board control is what I wanted to say wrt charge. You're right, it has more to do with trading than tempo.
- The term 'initiative' has a different meaning in other games so it may become a 'false friend' if we pick the chess-like definition. I'm pretty sure I've heard people say they have a 'tempo advantage' more often than having 'initiative on the board'. -- Karol007 (talk) 21:49, 9 June 2015 (UTC)
- Ah, yes. I have actually played a certain amount of D&D (similar enough to Pathfinder), and that version of initiative just means "who gets to act first". It is a numerical representation of the tempo concept from Hearthstone and (as I understand it) chess initiative. In all 3 games (and many others), someone goes first and has initiative (either by default in chess and Hearthstone, or by random roll in RPGs), and therefore has the first opportunity to set up a threatening situation which the opponent can choose to ignore or respond to. If the player fails to set up a threat, the opponent now has the opportunity to do so and therefore gains the tempo/initiative, which may also happen if the response to the threat is good enough to turn the tables. On the other hand the response could be so poor as to snowball into an even more threatening or overwhelming position, so we can talk about "amounts" of tempo.
- I would say based on wikipedia the terms are close enough to synonymous between the games (as well as my understanding of the natural word in English). We should mainly stick with the one used by the community, which in Hearthstone's case is "tempo", but it probably doesn't hurt to mention "initiative" for the sake of explanation towards players of other games like chess! I also notice chess also uses "tempo" as a unit of measurement of advantage, which we should probably be sure not to confuse :) - jerodast (talk) 23:06, 9 June 2015 (UTC)